Corpus

​

The body fails, requires protection.

From cold, against wind
a barrier, a frame, a supporting role.

Cast offs to cast outs.

Never perfect but, all is for the best.

Clutching shoddy luck through shoddy times

held together with shoddy thread but,
Keep on! Its good enough
until it’s not.
When you follow the line
of thread, you’ll find me
deep within the city maze.
Listen for a spell
to each of those voices
the cries at dawn
the cracks in the tiles
a splintering of wood.
Footsteps in the night,
who has walked the floors
that now adorn these walls?

​

Where is the origin
of these bright fragments?
Not hewn or cast, not mixed or brushed.
Instead placed, sewn, bound, nailed.
Held as one
until their next iteration.
A material parataxis born afresh.
From bearing witness to our quotidian movements
This domesticity passes into open air
to breathe.
Before being brought in again, once more.
We craft a stage set, a holding for our time here,
passing between darkness we patch the holes.
And so, move forwards with the little we know.
Have rescued, salvaged and reclaimed
and now it is we
who bear witness,
we who scrutinise what kept us company
through all of our laughter, our tears, those exultant cries

in the dead of night.

​

David Cochrane

June 2023